


Atomic

by sfiddy



Series: Balcony Duet verse [3]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Inspired by Music, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Soignante's music prompts, This song made me incredibly uncomfortable so I wrote Balcony Duet verse stuff, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 22:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21288971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfiddy/pseuds/sfiddy
Summary: Christine and Erik attend an unusual concert and need to reground themselves afterwards.Originally posted to Tumblr for Soignante's Music Prompt #39, Pendecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima”I found the song so disturbing I had to channel it into my Balcony Duet universe.
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Series: Balcony Duet verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1531820
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	Atomic

Christine grinned as she flopped onto the futon and pulled the tickets from the envelope. “Look! Reyer’s new mini-theater is finished and he sent us tickets to the first show!”

Erik glanced up from his desk. “Let me guess, he’s hoping we’ll like it and agree to host the show here? More tickets sales?”

She laughed. “Oh, for a modest fee, I’m sure. Hmm, I’ve never heard of this one. Pendecki, but he’s not saying the piece, just that it’s ‘a modern experiment in emotional discord’.”

With a shudder, Erik shut down his laptop and slapped his calendar closed. “What time?”

She leapt up. “We better go get ready!”

…

This was not promising, Christine thought as they filed into their VIP seats. The small, salon-like setting of Reyer’s fifty-seater in his music school was intimate and posh with new red upholstery and carpeting everywhere. Gold tone fixtures and trim dripped from every edge. Even in the tight, friendly setting, no one was talking, no pre-show chit chat warmed the rows, populated entirely by the tight-knit leaders of the arts community.

Erik leaned near her ear. “This place looks like it was decorated by a vampire.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage a really polite way to tell him that after the show. He’s invited us to the champagne reception.”

He sighed. “Since when does a teacher throw champagne receptions?”

Christine laid a hand on his arm. “Since he agreed to the buy-out. Now chill, they’re lowering the lights.”

The musicians filed in, somber in black. When the conductor joined them, circled in a pale moon of a spotlight, muted applause was met with a steely glare.

What the hell was going on?

She didn’t need to see behind the mask to know that Erik’s brow was furrowing.

The conductor raised his baton and a white-hot needle of sound pierced the hush. At her side, Erik’s breath caught. The music, if it could be called that for it was more like… an atmosphere, a terrible point held to the nerves, did not so much fill the space as cut through it. Invasive and brutal. The edge of a skater’s blades with no poetry or motion.

Erik shifted in his seat. He never listened to experimental music like this, avoiding it in favor of the soothing power of more standard repertoire. In no way did he lack the capacity to comprehend it, it was simply a preference that itself grew from knowledge. 

And he was a live wire. More than once Christine had seen how a sour note made him jump, or how he’d clutch his chest if a bass beat was out of sync.

Motion at her side. Erik was folding his arms over his chest, wincing with every bowstrike on strings. A thrust of the bows brought his hands to the armrests, white knuckles on rosewood. Paler still for the red everywhere. Blood. 

Tears pricked Christine’s eyes. Yes,the music was powerful, and in that it was accomplished. But it was not beautiful. It was every horror of man tapped on a fingerboard and amplified through maple. And it hurt Erik. He was holding it together, but only just.

And then the strings were plucked. 

“C’mon,” Christine said, rising. She slipped a hand under his arm and tugged him up, limp and twitchy. “We’re going.”

They walked past the champagne tables and ignored the invitations to a drink. Christine settled Erik in the car, folding him into the passenger seat where he shrank, arms folded, in silence.

“Let’s go home,” she said, more to herself than him. He was keyed up on the ride back, tapping out phantom melodies on the dashboard, the center console, his mask. Was it grounding, Christine wondered, to feel something like that, afterwards?

Then she remembered, and turned the car down main street, past the coffee shops, the hookah lounge, the craft cocktail bar, and the charcuterie bar. Yeah, that just opened.

“We’re going to the theater," she announced.

“Why?” He sounded reedy. Twisted.

“Because it’s the third Saturday.”

They were greeted joyfully at the door by a woman in a green bustier and a man wearing the same. Plastic cups of cheap champagne were shoved into their hands and they were led, as if it wasn’t their actual theater, to the front row and seated by the lead performers. An usher (honestly, didn’t the stagehands have anything better to do on a Saturday night?) was stationed at their side with two chilled bottles of Andre nestled in a crumbling styrofoam cooler with instructions to keep them topped off.

Christine sang the songs and by the time a jarringly young Frank N. Furter was digging deep into his still-settling baritone, the tension had gone out of Erik’s fists. He leaned over and kissed her soundly, his red cup full and crackling in his hands.

“Thank you.”

The toast chuckers were all right, and though Christine knew she would regret the hangover from all the cheap champagne, she set a reminder for herself to have pizza delivered after the show.

.

**Author's Note:**

> I found the song so disturbing I had to channel it into my Balcony Duet universe. I gave Erik all my reactions to the song and let myself imagine the best way to recover. Garbage bubbly and a ridiculous bit of live theater on your home turf was the answer. :)


End file.
